Hey All,

Being the second time around with an Aston Vantage, I have chosen to go a completely different direction then my last V8V. I realized that it simply is not cost effective to upgrade the rear catback exhaust as they produce almost no power (unless they have X-pipe, which I will address at a later time). In addition, I always like the aerodynamic function of the OEM factory exhaust since most of the aftermarket replacement exhaust completely ruin the aerodynamic flow of the air underneath the car to the rear diffuser / Transmission cooler. I wanted to retain this functionality for both aero/downforce purposes but also for proper effective transmission cooling. For that reason I have decided to keep my stock exhaust. However, it is the ugliest eye-sore of a boat anchor exhaust I have ever seen on a car. You think Aston Martin would have at least polished it if it was going to be so easily visible from the rear. For that reason I decided to go ahead and brighten it up to hopefully make the rear end of the car look significantly improved. Again, pardon the long winded write-up again, but since nobody has documented such a process I figured I would give it a shot, enjoy...

Supplies:
- Random Orbital Buffer (Bought Griots Garage kit from detailersdomain.com)
- UBER Hard Cutting/Compound Foam Pad (yellow), Medium Polish Foam Pad (orange)
- Mothers Metal Polish (or Meguire's Metal Polish, switched later b/c its better) = $10
- 600 or 800 grit (preferred) wet sand paper = $5
- 6mm metric Hex Wrench = ~$5
- 10 microfiber towels just to be safe = ~$10
- old plastic disposable tupper ware filled with water
- old plastic spray bottle filled with water and tiny bit of dish soap shaken up
- some old carpet/mats or cardboard to lie down on as you will be on the floor most of the time

Prep Work:

First, MAKE SURE THE EXHAUST IS COLD (learned this one the hard way even an hour after I drove it lol). If you are impatient, just spray the exhaust down with an entire bottle of water and within 5-10 min it should be cool to the touch. You need the exhaust to be below 100 degrees otherwise the polish will harden on surface of the exhaust and make it harder to work with. Preferably do this after car has been sitting over night.

Second, In order to gain more access to the exhaust and have more room to work with I highly recommend taking the rear diffuser piece off. It literally takes 30 seconds, and since the rear bolts can also get nasty, you might as well take them off anyways to polish them up while they are off.

Third, Clean the exhaust with some windex and a rag. Then, Cut a 3x3" piece or larger piece of the 600-800 grit black sand paper (800 is ideal if you can get it, 600 is a bit too rough, and 1000 will take much longer but will yield best results) in the plastic tupper ware filled with water. Get it nice and wet, and also spray down the exhaust with the water bottle to get the surface soaked. This wet layer will act as lubrication and also expel all the fine metal particles. Work the sand paper in a front to rear motion in the direction of the airflow to keep with the grain (it will be easier to polish and make look good other than a bunch of random erratic sand marks). Spray continuously with one hand as you sand with the other, stopping to wet the sand paper every so often to clean the surface of the and paper to prevent it from getting clogged up. Once you get down to 800 grit (or even 1000 grit for those OCD enough), you should be able to see most of the stock exhaust nasty imperfections disappear. The sanding process really should only take 15 minutes at most. Its primary purpose is to prepare the surface for polishing and remove any major flaws or imperfections in the exhausts surface. also be sure to sand the outer piping as these can often be unsightly and are look much nicer when fully polished up. DO NOT SAND THE CENTER BADGE (unnecessary, its already been polished from the factory). You do not need to sand the faces of the diffuser hex bolts either (also polished from the factory). Only the actual muffler body has not been polished from the factory and this is where 95% of the attention (and effort) will go.

Polishing Process & Technique:

Once you have sanded down the exhaust and wiped it down afterwards with microfiber towel and ensure the surface is completely clean, you can move onto the next polishing phase. Setup your polisher by placing the Yellow Cutting/Compound foam pad firmly onto the velcro backing of the orbital buffer. I made the mistake of starting with just the Medium Polish pad first and wasted quite a bit of time as it was not "cutting" into the metal surface enough. Most pads are designed for automotive paint, not actual metal so you can go with a much more aggressive pad on metal than you normally would otherwise.

Once you have plugged in your variable speed orbital buffer w/ extension cord, shake up the metal polish bottle vigorously and then squirt a spiral of the polish on the pads surface. gently dab the pad (with the buffer still off) into 5-6 different places across the surface to spread the material around and prevent it from splattering everywhere. Once you have done so, then turn on the buffer at a slower speed (2 out of 6 in the case of the Griot's buffers). Work the polish into the paint in a rectangular grid pattern (think columns & rows). It make take a bit more polish at first to get started as the pad is completely dry, but once you have repeated this a few times the pad will require less polish as it is fully moist. You don't need to apply as much as you think, if you are doing it correctly you will get a nice grey glaze and the polish will eventually turn black. This is normal and is a good indication you are working the metal accordingly.

Once its starts getting dry and you can actually see the polish disappearing then add more polish accordingly (usually ever 30 second - 1 minute is a good estimate). Add a little bit at a time and work it into the metal.

Every 3-4 minutes you will have to wipe off the excess material and clean the surface of all the contaminants using a microfiber town (folded into 4 squares). Constantly clean the surface and flip over the towel to a clean section accordingly. Since the polish turns black, these towels are going to get incredibly dirty, Do not even bother trying to wash them after this, just toss them away as they are disposable at this point.

This will be a time & elbow grease intensive process. Example: The stock exhaust has about a 40% reflective surface (at best, mine was probably better than most, my previous one was in much worse shape). It will take you roughly 1 hour of solid polishing per ever 20% improvement in reflectivity. I polished mine for about 2 hours and got from about 40-80% (I will put in another hour when I have more time to get the last 20%, but you can see from the pictures that even 80% is a massive improvement. The center plaque will polish to a 100% mirror finish within 5 minutes (same for the bolts) as they were polished already from the factory.

Next, when you start to notice the exhaust getting much more reflective and you don't seem to improving much more with the Yellow cutting pad (usually around the 1.5 hour mark), then switch over to the orange Med Polish pad and continue the process. Increase the speed to 5 out of 6 on the orbital buffer when you switch over to the Medium Polish and move at a rate of roughly 1 inch every 2 seconds with nice neat overlapping circles as you move the polisher in straight lines (rectangular shape). Its easy to do one half of the exhaust then switch over & vice versa. Once you do this you will immediately start to see the shine start to come out more, but you can only do this after you have completed the cutting phase, doing it in reverse order takes FOREVER (a lesson I learned quickly). Do this for another 1.5 hours and you will get to a perfect mirror finish (I stopped early simply due to lack of sunlight and freezing temps). Do the whole surface of the exhaust obviously, but pay more attention to the lower 75% of the exhaust as this is the portion that will be visible from the rear when the rear diffuser is reinstalled. Polishing the very top of the exhaust by the transmission cooler is bit overkill, but if you want to do it to be thorough by all means do so.

Summary:

Although I have not fully completed this one yet, I will be finishing up the last hour of polishing when I get a chance in the near future. I have provided pictures of the progress so far to give you a comparison between before & after. Also, I have included closeups of the Aston Plaque to compare what a 100% mirror finish looks like compared to the 80%, its still not perfect, but heck of a lot better than it was. This is one of those modifications that simply has no shortcuts, you just have to put the hours in to get the results. The flip side to that is its extremely inexpensive to do, and you do not even need a lift to do it. You could take the exhaust off to do this, but that seems excessive as the only time anyone really takes off the boat anchor is to replace it with an aftermarket solution. This procedure is for those who fully intend to keep their exhaust. I did not include the cost of the orbital buffers and microfiber towels as most people already have these lying around their garages anyways and are already sunk costs. With that said, all it takes is a few supplies to make this job happen and it's something that ANYONE can do. The supplies may cost $30, but making the stock boat anchor look a lot less like a boat anchor is $Priceless$.

After having performed the polishing and removing Fuse 22, the exhaust feels, sounds, and now LOOKS like an exhaust worth of being on an Aston Martin. Its well worth the time for those willing to put in a little bit of Elbow Grease

Hope that helps,
007

(First Post has all the before pictures of exhaust to see the original condition of the exhaust, 2nd post has pictures of the supplies and bolts before & after, 3rd post has all the after pictures for your reference).

 

Supplies & Bolts (before & after polish)

 

Final Results

 

Very nice! I never even thought about doing that - now I have another project to do.....

I too, like the stock pipe with the fuse 22 pull, and I've tried the cats and aftermarket pipes, they're a bit too 'look-at-me' loud for my tastes. As one of my car buds (who drives a 911) says of the factory pipe on the Vantage:

"The only thing wrong with it is that its factory".

LOL

 

nice job! I had issues with mine as well so decided to mask up the entire car lifted it up, and spray the thing satin high heat black, I removed as much as I could before spraying (rear spoiler and rear grill) it also looks great, and will have no need for regular maintenance, I used a high quality high temp 2K paint and i run cloth over it every time I wash the car Its been on a year now and still looks good

 

What about some pics then Greg?

 

I would love to submit a pic of it, I just do not know how to load it up

 

Easy! What you do is go over to www.photobucket.com and create a free account. It has a very easy interface to upload photos from your computer and then they stay in your account on the Photobucket site. Then, when you come into a forum like this and want to post a photo....

1. Go to your Photobucket account and select the photo. Click it and it will display, the on the right side of the photo you will see in a box "LINKS TO SHARE PHOTOS" and you have two choices. Click the lower one in the box which says IMG and it will automatically copy the link for you on your clipboard.

2. Make your text post here on the forum, and when you are ready to put in your photo, right click your mouse and simply paste below your typed text. You will see a string of characters display, and that will be your photo - don't edit the string just leave it as it is. End result is this:



That's all there is to it, post away!

 

Thank you sir i have tried to create an account and will see if i can load an image if i can i will take some rear end shots and put them up appreciate the tip

 

hi guiys I have loaded a picture showing the black silencer, seems i have outstripped my ability and loaded a vid so let it load to 30 seconds and you can hear it

 

The black is an interesting take and innovative idea. The real reason I polished it is I want to see the exhaust, I just wanted it to look like an aftermarket exhaust as I will be upgrading the sound and power soon. The polished stock catback really does look even more amazing in person and I highly recommend everyone doing this mod if you plan on keeping your stock catback. It makes the rear of the car look so much nicer, especially from cars driving behind you. (Standing up you don't see it as much as it is a higher vantage point, no pun intended)

Although the black is a unique route, I still think aston exhausts look best polished IMO.

 

Use imgur.com. No account needed and it pretty much can't be easier.

 

I hear you and agree but I have few bikes and to keep the billet and stainless like a mirror is hard work, and they are easy to get to, compared to my solution for high heat black.
The rear box does not get that hot so liitle or no risk of the black satin finish becoming compromised.
Just carefull when replacing the back box its not bad as it is and its shape aids the GB oil cooler, but I do like your solution and i must confess i never considered it until cing your post Very Nice

 

Thanks ... I should have some update pics soon of the 100% polish as soon as the weather warms up a bit

 

lets just hope i dont get all horny for it and have to strip mine down and re do it in high polish